Below the Surface
by myshipsaresunk
Summary: Scott is lost, drifting. He has no purpose, no reason to live, and certainly no person to die for. Then he hears her voice, and it all comes rushing back to him. Filler for the alternate dimension scene.


Disclaimer: Ant-Man belongs to Marvel Studios and Disney. I do not claim to own any of this

Rating: K+

Author's Note: This is a one-shot filler for when Scott Lang was in the alternate dimension. Lots of father/daughter love near the end/second half :) Sorry if the words aren't exact, I've only seen the movie once and I'm going off my horrible memory. Enjoy :)

Below the Surface

There is nothing, and there is everything. There is life, and there is death. There are colours, and there is emptiness. There is silence, and there are bleeding voices. There is time, and there is infinity. There is space, and there is empty voids. There are oceans, and there are deserts.

Scott is drifting below the surface, too far to see any sunlight shine down through the depths to where his body is staying suspended. If you can call it suspension. There is no rules to matter here, no rules for gravity, for time, for space. This is a dimension in which the laws of physics don't apply. Nothing is right here. Up is down and down is right, right is left and left is up. It's all disorienting, one second there being flashes of bright colours, the next just... _nothing._

He's in the middle of it all, no tether to the dimension from whence he came. No thoughts are able to occur to him besides what he thinks on the spot. He's able to observe but not infer. What is inferencing? And even if he knows what it is, what use would something like that do here, here in a place where nothing is as it's supposed to be. Everything is wrong, and his brain is straining to understand, only to be thrown into confusion once again.

Who is he? What is he doing here? He doesn't remember anything before this dimension. Words come to him, words from an unknown person who sounds oddly familiar. Words explaining how there is no return from this place, words explaining what's happening to him, but he doesn't comprehend. How can he? There is no comprehension here, only drifting, following the emptiness as it drags him around.

Nothing is solid here, not like...not like what? Where he came from before? He didn't come from anywhere before. He's always been here, always been drifting. There is no before, there is no later, there is no _now_. It's all jumbled, a concept his mind cannot wrap itself around.

Things that shouldn't be possible are happening here. One second he sees people, the next it's just him again. One second he hears the screaming voices, the next silence. Everything is wrong. But why? Why are they wrong?

Why is he here? Was he sent here? Did he bring himself here? What happened before here? Who was he before here? Was there a before before here? What is here?

There is nothing but _here._ No now, no before, no nothing except here. This is a place, not a time; well, it's not really a place, but that's the closest explanation his brain can muster up. Surely there is always a time and a place, and if he can't have both then he must at least have a place. He can't be nowhere, can he? He has to be somewhere.

His senses are as perplexed as his mind. Smells, sights, noises, tastes, and things he feels are ever changing, ever shifting. Something leather against his skin one second, the startling and terrifying sensation of nothing the next. The smells of home and his mother's old chicken noodle soup one moment, the next nothing. Everything is just cycling through so fast he can't understand. He can't do anything except float there, eyes blinking in wonder.

How can he survive here? There is nothing here. He vaguely recalls hearing that someone else is here. Who, though? Where did he hear that? When? He doesn't see anyone, and even if he did, they must be dead, unless this place can preserve organic beings. Living things have to eat...right? He can't remember. Living things have to breathe...but there's no oxygen here. At least none that Scott can tell.

Wait...who's Scott? It sounds familiar, too familiar, but he can't place it. Whoever that named once belonged to doesn't exist anymore. Wiped away from the world, transported somewhere else as if they'd never been born. Known only in the memories of a few scattered people.

But at least that Scott guy had a life once. Him? (He doesn't have a name, at least not that that he can remember, so he can only refer to himself as 'him' or 'he', simple pronouns that have no owner). He has no life. He had no life. This floating in the depths of time and space...this is all he his. There has never been one to call him home, never been one to speak of him or to him, never been someone in his life besides himself. It's lonely and dismal, and he can't even identify the pang of bittersweet sorrow in him. He had to have been a person once, had to have had a life, a love. He once had _mattered_ , but now, here, he doesn't mean anything. He can't even make something of himself; there is nothing here to save, no one here to redeem. It's just a bunch of nothing, nothing that fills him with an emptiness like a void.

He knows he'll drift here forever, not having a purpose in life, and even worse, not being able to die. Time doesn't matter here, so he'll never grow old. Is it possible to die from distress and depression of not having a purpose?

He distantly remembers being the one to bring himself here. That's all, a simple memory flash of a thought he had some time ago (time has no meaning, so he cannot measure how long ago it was; was it one second? A hundred years? A thousand millennia?). He remembers bringing himself to this dimension, and he can think of is how immortality is so not worth giving up your purpose in life. If you have nothing to live for then life is dismal, but having nothing to die for? He wishes he could just cease to exist in both thought and form. He doesn't want to continue on like this in this lonely dimension.

Despair. That's the feeling he's experiencing. He's despairing because there is nothing for him here. There is nothing for anyone here! Death would be a lesser punishment than this void. Death would be kinder than sentencing someone to this fate, this destiny of drifting aimlessly and without an anchor for all of time, for even Death would be better company than this loneliness.

After the despair comes the apathy. As the years pass by, double back up, and thrust his ahead in time, the apathy comes in waves. Things explode around him, burst into vibrant colours, become sucked up by black holes, and send him rocketing to another void, but he begins to not care. He doesn't widen his eyes in wonder anymore, his heart rate doesn't speed up as he's flung forward anymore, and he begins to lose his senses. First goes his sense of touch; his body forgets how to feel. Then goes his taste and smell; there is simply nothing. Sounds fade out, and finally he closes his eyes, and he opens them again, there is nothing.

He becomes something that is no longer human, for how can you be human without all the unique attributes that set you aside from the insects or from the trees? This empty void is tearing who is is away. He is nothing, only chemicals and organs and tissues. From dust he came, and to dust he will return, but not for a while, at least. Time loses its meaning even more as he continues to drift.

Then something sparks his attention, opening his eyes and his ears. It's a voice, far away and weak, but still a voice. It's familiar, and it pulls at an emotion he'd thought he had lost the ability to feel. The voice grows louder and louder, pulling him from his apathy and despair and depression. It fills him with warmth, and he feels a smile grow on his face, thought he knows not why.

 _"Daddy?"_

A simple word, but it means so much. His brain, sluggish and dumb, doesn't comprehend exactly what the word means, but he knows it's important. It's an anchor to who he came from, a doorway to returning to his home. Home. A word so sweet that it brings tears to his eyes. He had forgotten about what it felt like to have a home, to be someone who people cared about, for a home is so much more than a place of dwelling. A home is where those you love are.

Love. Is that the warm feeling he feels when the voice calls out, _"Where's Daddy?"_

That voice carries him through years of darkness and drifting, and he begins to remember. And he begins to long for what he forgot when he entered this lonely dimension. Everything begins to rush back to him, and he drinks it all in, relishing in a newfound sense of purpose.

 _He_ is Scott. He is Scott Lang. He is a good man who illegally did some good things, and he had been put in a bad place because of it. He endured because he had a daughter waiting for him, a daughter who sees him as the hero he can never really be.

After getting out of the bad place he was put in an even worse place - he was free, but he couldn't see his daughter. It hadn't been fair, and he had been willing to do anything to see her again, even making some bad choices along the way. He's here in this bad place because he fought to protect his daughter from someone who meant to do her harm.

That's what his purpose is. His purpose is to protect his daughter, even if that means staying away from here. To protect his daughter he had to unlock the regulator and enter this dimension. He had to leave his daughter to protect her. But now...now she's calling for him. He has to find her again, he has to see her again. She's his reason for living. She's the one he would die for. She's his everything.

Suddenly his life has meaning again. He can do this. He can escape from this horrible place and hold her once again. He can tell her he loves her, and that he'll do whatever it takes to get to visit her. He can do anything.

Her voice continues to call out for him, and he closes his eyes, clearing his mind. Searching his memories. There has to be a way out.

"Don't mess with the regulator!"

Why? Why does that come to him instead of anything useful? Unless...

Scott clicks the regulator back together again and then opens it, messing with the gears of it. Suddenly it begins to spin, everything around him blurs.

Something happens, he doesn't remember. Can't remember. Next thing he knows, he's standing on the floor of his daughter's room. She's on the bed in front of him, but as soon as he appears she runs to his open arms, and he holds her tighter than ever. He suffered thousands of years in that lonely hell, no way he's ever going back. He did it all for her, and when you love someone you do anything for them. He's just lucky he has a second chance to be with her again, to make things right.

He looks in her eyes, and his own eyes sting with tears. Tears of joy. She's looking at him like he's her own personal hero, the knight who slayed the dragon and rescued her, and he knows that he doesn't deserve that look. He doesn't deserve to have such a beautiful, caring daughter. He doesn't deserve her at all, let alone to have her look at him like that, but she does, and it's the world to him.

Those years of loneliness and torture are worth her. And he'd relive every second of them if it meant she would still be alive.

Being her hero is an added bonus and privilege.


End file.
